This question has different types of implications. What do I prefer to see? Something that is about 900 px vertically (so I can fit the whole thing in my browser window on my 1680x1050 monitor at home).
However, I'm not going to personally share most pics at a size of 1350x900, because there are plenty of people that's too big for, and almost no one that'd be really too small for (sure I like seeing big pics, but I don't NEED to see big pics). Plus, since I browse this and other sites on my phone a lot, having to zoom out for the pics, then in for the text all the time can be a pain.
The really large resolutions I don't share at because I don't want people to be able to easily make decent size prints from my web images. Once you start hitting 2MP images, you can start making pretty good 5x7 and decent 8x10 prints.
My web resize macro in Photoshop resizes to fit 900 px horizontally and 750 pix vertically. This way, it'll easily display well on most monitors, and is still big enough to see decent amounts of detail.
Things in a 16:9 aspect ratio, I tend to share at 1000 to 1200 pixels wide, and wider panoramas, I will share up to 1500 pixels wide, as those look terrible at 900...you lose a lot of the detail.
Most of the time I make 1000x1000 (1000x667 in landscape, 667x1000 in portrait) images for web use. Those are big enough to see enough detail, but not big enough to print.
Phillip, I was looking at your photo size the other day... I like that size - 1280 - for viewing shots with lots of fine detail. If the photo isn't all about the details, then smaller sizing is OK for me... 1000px on the long size or so.
1024 wide is a bit small for my taste. Smaller than that often makes it difficult to get a decent impression of the picture, IMO. I think 1280 is a nice width but wider is ok for panoramas.
If you're posting in photo forums, people will generally have quite big monitors. If you're looking to reach the general public, keep it relevant to the most commonly used displays. And of course, as more and more people use their mobiles, one needs to think about how to (automatically) adjust for this.
I like to post a smaller resolution normally, so those out there viewing on a laptop can enjoy without scrolling, but leave a link to the larger. Even then I don't put very large images on the net.
I have a 27" 2560px wide monitor, so pretty much any size is fine for me, and frankly 1024px actually looks small (especially if it's not very high).
However, that's on my home computer. I also browse using my work PC (1680px across) and Adroid phone (whatever not much across) and my ipAd 2 which is 1024px across, so larger photos just become annoying.
While I really appreciate evaluating fine detail from time to time, I feel a link leading to a larger presentation of the file would be better than embedding it at huge sizes on a forum, though I can see how this would be tedious to have to click larger links all the time.
(this is one point, and only one, where DPR's forums are pretty nice - if you upload to their galleries, views can automatically view the photos in several sizes by clicking on them)
Also, I *think* (fred?) even linking photos on a forum increases that actual forum's bandwidth requirements, which is one of the reasons most forums put limitations on the photo sizes linked. I could be very wrong on that, though.
Sep 14, 2012 at 01:32 PM
Steve Spencer Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: On
I use image upload from FM and I don't like to use a lot of jpeg compression, so on this site I usually use 900 pixels wide in landscape and 800 pixels long in portrait. This keeps me within the limit of the file size with only minimal jpeg compression.
cputeq wrote:
Also, I *think* (fred?) even linking photos on a forum increases that actual forum's bandwidth requirements, which is one of the reasons most forums put limitations on the photo sizes linked. I could be very wrong on that, though.
No, externally hosted images are downloaded straight from their source to the client computer browsing FM. They don't go through the FM server somehow.
For images posted to FM, I generally use 800x600 or similar, with no jpeg compression (or as little as possible). For galleries I post online for others to view, I generally use 1200 x 800. My desktop monitors are both at 2560x1440.
My primary screen is 1920. I have posted for the last few years at 1280 wide landscape and 700 wide portrait. That usually captures the detail I desire.
I post in 1024x768, because I don't want to create multiple versions of my photos for posting, and this I find the best compromise between FM, 500px, and my iPad. I prefer somewhat larger, but I don't maximize my browser on my 2560x1440 screen, because it makes for hard-to-read text, so the sweet spot is probably somewhere around 1280 or a tad larger.
Personally I think that it is more important that most photos posted are roughly the same size. Larger photos look much better, and it makes it hard to compare two shots for any particular property when there is a big size difference.
1280 works best for me (on my 1920 monitor). The larger sizes are somehow a bit uncomfortable because I've realized I rarely keep the browser stretched full-screen. So otherwise, if not 1280, I personally would pick the 1024 option (among from the posted above).
carstenw wrote:
Personally I think that it is more important that most photos posted are roughly the same size. Larger photos look much better, and it makes it hard to compare two shots for any particular property when there is a big size difference.
That makes sense, but I don't really see the need to compare images from different people. I very rarely do that.
